so my wheels were just 27" steel replacements, purchased them from a local bike shop. today, a friend took a one minute ride on my bike around his apartment parking lot and the rear wheel FOLDED on him. other than loose spokes, is there anything that could have caused this? the place i bought it from trued it before handing it over to me and that's all that has been touched on the wheel. i've literally ridden on the wheel maybe 3 or 4 times so i took it right over to the shop to see if they would warranty the wheel or just replace the rim/spokes and the dude was straight up RUDE to me. pulled the "i don't know what you did with it after it left the door" card and basically told me all he could do is attempt to straighten it out. however, they would still charge me to do so? you would think the company would take the 30 dollar blow to replace the rim and spokes as opposed to lose business.

is it even safe to ride on a wheel that has been folded at one point? seems to me that metal would be substantially weaker after that.... sucks because i've always had a good experience with that place and i've given them a lot of my business as well as sent friends there. may be shopping for bike parts somewhere else from now on.

^lol wtf? is that serious? it was probably a little more bent than that one was in the beginning of the video. it's at the bike shop right now so that ******* can "call the manufacturer to see if they'll warranty it"

edit: but if it did it once, you think it'd be more prone to doing it again? i almost want to tell that guy to **** right off, buy a new rim and just replace it myself. my brother and friend are both pretty good with truing. don't know why i didn't do that in the first place.

Maybe your buddy tested it for bunny hops once he got around the corner? ;-]

hahaha i wish that were the case so i could just make him replace it. he didn't leave my site, though! he was literally make a turn going less than a few mph and it just TOSSED him. he's not a big guy either, maybe mid 100's. only thing i can think of is **** rim or the dude that handed over the wheel didn't think to check the spokes aside from truing it.

Yes, we once used that method of wheel truing on a club ride after one of our members got his wheel caught in a pavement crack and taco'd it.
But that was just to let him continue the ride and get back home.

If you can get a new rim and rebuild the wheel yourself then that's what I'd recommend. Are you really ever going to feel confident riding on the repaired wheel using the original rim?

Yes, we once used that method of wheel truing on a club ride after one of our members got his wheel caught in a pavement crack and taco'd it.
But that was just to let him continue the ride and get back home.

If you can get a new rim and rebuild the wheel yourself then that's what I'd recommend. Are you really ever going to feel confident riding on the repaired wheel using the original rim?

I think the same thing happened to me when executing a low speed u-turn... might have steered too far and put so much lateral stress on the front wheel it popped into an alternate configuration. Wish I had known about the slam fix to get me back home.

It was a cheap MTB wheel though, don't know if that would happen to a better, hand built wheel.

Consider that tire pressure may have been low - Also consider that the axle may have slipped forward on the drive side and bent the wheel against the frame...

Also - Don't let anyone ride a bike your not willing to have destroyed...

Bicycle or Motorcycle...

tire pressure was at ~90psi, aired them up before i went to his apartment. all axle nuts were torqued VERY tight. i usually follow by the "don't let anyone ride..." rule (especially with my car), but he took it for a quick spin around the parking lot. i just don't understand unless the rim was THAT weak.

tugrul, my bent wheel happened during a turn close to a u-turn but it happened to the REAR... now that just doesn't make sense to me haha.

anybody have any thoughts on that twin-wall velocity rim? looks pretty standard, nothing fancy but do you think it'd be much stronger than the ones i have now? they're just the bottom dollar steel replacements you can get for a dime a dozen.

First of all don't assume that the wrench that was rude to you has any investment in the brand identity of that shop or participates in their future success. It would be safe to assume that he is a $9/hr hack that only learned to wrench on bikes by wrenching on bikes. Guys like that are very very sensitive to any customer feedback that may implicate their friend/fellow wrenches that they did not competently do something on a bicycle. I've found that one of the secondary reasons more people don't cycle is the treatment they receive from their LBS, with the bike fit they receive from their LBS dominating.

I had a nightmare experience with a custom wheel I had made for my tandem a while back. The shop owner and I talked at length about my outlier needs for a bombproof wheel, but wanted to build it "his way" using 14/16 Keirin spokes (it is mostly a fixie/hipster shop). In the end the wheel folded in the first five miles. My experience was similar to yours. I went back and the hipster who built it accused me of detensioning all the spokes and "messing with the wheel." The wheel was completely detensioned through a full quarter of the spokes (48h) and had mildly tacoed. He tried to true it back to something resembling a wheel. However, at this point the rim was "bent" and the spokes did not have even tension, which was necessary to make it round and true. A strong wheel has even spoke tension while being naturally round and true. If you have to increase/decrease spoke tension (which you do) to fix the wheel it inevitably leads to degrading wheel integrity due to uneven spoke tension.

Long story short for me was that I learned that the shop employees, and the owner had a "circle the wagons" mentality of us vs. the customer. All I wanted was the original custom wheel build I had advocated for: 14g straight spokes. In the end the shop owner actually sent me a check giving me my money back rather than just rebuild the wheel in a way that he disagreed with.

Now, to be fair to this shop owner, he was citing Jobst Brandt et. al. from old listserve posts where some truly knowledgeable wheel builders were commenting that in general wheels with double butted spokes are stronger than straight gauge. However, those original posts, in context, also established that the double butted spokes need to be sufficiently strong for the application (and if so, would actually prevent pulling spokes through rims). What he was neglecting was that in the original context of those discussions the same authorities also established that in outlier applications straight guage 14g and bombproof 13/14g spokes are actually necessary. The increased risk of cracking a rim being unavoidable as any less spoke wouldn't build a strong enough wheel to survive. Zinn cites this in his books (caters to outlier big cyclists over 6'6" in his custom business) as does Brandt.

Moral here is that most LBS aren't at all interested in a relationship with you the customer. Most LBSs are actually only marginally surviving and are only doing so with a predatory relationship with the customer. You'd be surprised in how many reputable shops the wrenches and cashier jockeys are constantly encouraged to increase the repair or sales ticket to drive revenues. Similarly, shops are holding employees accountable for any repairs/sales that are coming back. That hourly employee you dealt with may be just and ass, but he might also work for a shop manager that will ride him hard if they have to revisit a repair ticket. Any additional time making right your situation is not time generating revenues on other tickets. That's the funny thing, most shops can't keep up with their backlog of repairs and tunes, but keep poisoning the well in their relationship with customers.

Its amazing the entitlement that wrenches and shop owners have for their community. That somehow they are the nexus of the cycling community, and that the cyclists "owe them" or that they have a "right" to be in business. Start a relationship with you local shop owner. Share your experience with him. You'll often be surprised to learn that the problems you are having have their genesis with the shop owners fundamental lack of anything that could be considered business acumen.

Last point, get a truing stand and buy your own bike tools; wrench on your bikes yourself.

I bought a 27" aluminum replacement last summer for like 40 bux new at the LBS. Been a wonderful wheel. Not sure how the heck a steel wheel would fold over, but I can see the shop not believing it and not wanting to warranty it. I just took a road bike from the 80's out through singletrack today, hopping over fallen trees and over smallish rock gardens and never a problem. Do you have pictures?

The Velocity rims are probably ok but I don't have any experience with them. Are your current rims really steel? If using rim brakes then braking is really marginal with steel rims the moment they get a little wet. I'd suggest switching to an aluminum rim just for that reason.

Note that the effective diameter of rims (ERD) varies a little even for the same wheel size and that will affect the required spoke length. If you get a replacement rim of the same ERD (or really close), then you'd be able to reuse the current spokes.

mtnbke, that makes total sense. i understand that bike shops are basically in it to win it, they're just like any business. they've got to make money somehow and spending their own money to fix a problem that they made is something they just don't want to do. however, you'd think fixing that one mistake (which wouldn't even cost them much... at all) would be a positive thing as far as me coming back and buying more parts. ****, i even offered to buy a new rim and spokes FROM THEM and the guy, for whatever reason, just shrugged it off and continued to argue with me. at that point i was ready to throw my wheel at him and start shopping somewhere else for parts. i'm definitely going to look into a truing stand or even just find a friend that has one, i'm sure someone does. as for wrenching on my own bike, i do everything myself. only thing i don't mess with are wheels just because i've never put spokes in and trued one myself.

jbrow1, i don't understand it either haha. it's funny because after it bent, my friend and i were able to bend it straight, and then bend it right back to it's awful, deformed state like it was nothing. no pictures because it's at the shop, but here's a picture of about what it looked like... maybe even a little worse.

prathmann, wheels are definitely a cheap steel. funny thing though, i hadn't even used brakes with that rear wheel because me and my friend had just finished running new cables/housings to the rear and before even testing them out it flopped on me.

i'm probably going to grab my wheel from them tomorrow and tell them to forget about it then just replace it with a better rim myself. thanks for the heads up on how the ERD and spoke length coact, prathmann. i had no idea.

woke up to a call from the shop today. it was the dude that sold me the wheel and put it together. he okay'ed a warranty on it and put that credit toward a better alloy wheel with stainless steel spokes so hopefully this will hold up better